Historians of Medicine Working on Central and Eastern Europe

Advertising in Central and East European Medical Journals

The following advertisements are taken from the journals Psychiatrie, Neurologie und medizinische Psychologie, Casopis Lekaru Ceskych, and Neuropsihijatrija during the 1960s and 1970s. Meant exclusively for physician audiences, they cover products ranging from medical instruments and sleeping pills to anticonvulsants and beauty creams. They demonstrate the international nature of these markets, with both West and East European producers seeking to expand their consumer base.

One thought on “Advertising in Central and East European Medical Journals”

By weird coincidence I took a photo of the same Dormutil ad from a DDR journal with my phone a couple of weeks ago – was struck by the playful cartoon of the sleeping patients, and by the fact that pharmaceuticals were being advertised at all. I read in a UN report (http://www.unodc.org/documents/scientific/SCITEC13.pdf) that Dormutil was the East German trade name for a nonbarbituate sedative more commonly known in the West as Methaqualone, produced by State pharma in the DDR – and its over-the-counter availability led to widespread abuse (it’s apparently the same drug used recreationally as ‘disco-biscuits’ in the Glam Rock clubs of ’70s America. Interesting, given that I’ve seen a few historians argue there was no recreational drug use in East Germany… would be curious to know if there are studies on recreational drug use in the region before ’89…